Charles Joseph Clark (Leader of the Official Opposition)
Progressive Conservative
Mr. Clark:
A reform which we will introduce will be the annual publication of five-year spending forecasts and five-year revenue forecasts of the Government of Canada. What is almost unbelievable and almost impossible for me to accept is that in the United States, in the United Kingdom and in Canada there are five-year revenue projections and five-year spending projections, that in the United States they are published, that in the United Kingdom they are published, but that in Canada under the Trudeau government they are kept secret.
Why are they kept secret? Why should parliament not know what public servants know when they set budget policy? Why should the people of Canada not know about the implications, five years down the line, of budget policy which is being
November 20, 1978
The Budget-Mr. Clark
brought in now? Why should there be so much secrecy? Why should Canadians be kept in the dark about the basis of national economic policy? There is no reason. This government, which has grown so old in office, is so captive to the old habit of secrecy that it simply will not break it.
I give to the people of Canada and to this House the commitment that after the next election we as a new government will break that bad habit and let the sun shine in on the five-year forecasts and projections on which national economic policy is based.
I think all of us in this parliament are concerned about how much, if anything, must be kept secret and how much can be made public. We must take a hard look at taking away part of the veil which now covers our budget-making process. We know that the way the United States deals with the problem of holding a potential special advantage because of special information is by making sure that all information is available to everybody. Here we keep all information from everybody. 1 think we must take a hard look at whether the system in the United States does not have more to recommend it than the system which has led us to so much economic difficulty here.
With regard to those technical changes in budgetary policy which can confer no positive or negative advantage or disadvantage, we in this party think that those matters should be discussed in public and that they should be moved out, from the preparation of this budget onward, into the open so that there can be that kind of consideration.
Unfortunately, this secrecy which has cast a shadow and a cloak over budgetary policy is pervasive in this government. In the budget documents there is a brief, seemingly innocuous but dangerous reference to some $300 million which the government of Canada is going to make available to those companies which are adversely affected by the negotiations at the Geneva round of GATT. The government knows what went on at GATT; parliament does not, the companies affected do not. The government does know, and the government is of the view that at least $300 million worth of damage was done to the Canadian public interest and to the interests of Canadian companies by what was negotiated away at GATT.
Part of the reason that that causes so much concern is that the industries whose lives and future are being affected by these negotiations at GATT have consistently been kept outside. Once again, other nations with economies far more complex than ours have found ways to ensure that industries whose lives are affected by tariff negotiations have a means of participating in those negotiations. That is not the case here.
Subtopic: THE BUDGET
Sub-subtopic: FINANCIAL STATEMENT OF THE MINISTER OF FINANCE